Op-Ed: NH needs skilled workers. This old Stratham campus could help

I published this piece today in the Seacoast Online. You can read it on their website.

A few months ago, I joined George and the ROMEOs for breakfast at the Country View Diner in Greenland. The ROMEOs are a group of retirees who meet up regularly for coffee, eggs, and lively conversation. They wanted to talk to me about a building many of us regularly drive by: what was once the Great Bay Community College campus on Route 33 in Stratham. Over coffee, they made the case that the building should be training young people for skilled work again. By the time the plates were cleared, they’d convinced me.

For those who don’t know, 275 Portsmouth Avenue has a history worth revisiting.

In 1982, the State of New Hampshire built a vocational technical college there. It was a three-story facility, more than 100,000 square feet on roughly 90 acres, designed to train Granite Staters for skilled careers. It later became the Stratham campus of what is now Great Bay Community College. When Great Bay consolidated its campus in Portsmouth, the building was sold and has mostly sat underused. Today it is privately owned and on the market. It might well be converted into warehouse space or housing. 

But wouldn’t it be great if the facility that was built to train New Hampshire’s workforce could serve that purpose again? 

Talk to almost any employer on the Seacoast and you'll hear the same thing: they can't find enough welders, machinists, sheet metal workers, pipefitters, electricians, carpenters, and HVAC technicians or the medical assistants and licensed nursing aides our communities also depend on. Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the largest employer in our region, needs that same pipeline of skilled tradespeople and, like everywhere else, it is competing for too few trained workers.

These are good jobs. Many pay well above the minimum and median wage, can’t be outsourced, and don’t saddle young people with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt.

If learning a skilled trade can lead to a secure, well-paid career, why aren’t we building more on-ramps to help young people get there?

We rarely get second chances like this. 275 Portsmouth Avenue was built for technical education. It sits on Route 33, just minutes from I-95 and Route 101. With more than 100,000 square feet and hundreds of parking spaces, it has room for classrooms, hands-on labs, and high-bay shop space. It is already a good portion of the way to being a trade school. It just needs us to see it that way and to help make it happen.

Because the property is privately owned today, we’d need partners. It’s an opportunity for collaboration between the skilled trades and their apprenticeship programs, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the Community College System of New Hampshire, area high schools, local employers, the state, and the property's owner. The trades and the workers who already do this work could help build it. A trade school here could prepare people to step directly into a registered apprenticeship, offer dual enrollment for high school students, and run fast-track certificate programs for adults changing careers.

While the future of a building in Stratham should be decided locally, Washington holds many of the resources that make a project like this possible. In Congress, I will fight to:

• Strengthen federal career and technical education (CTE) funding. The Carl D. Perkins Act is the country’s main federal investment in CTE. It’s a great piece of bipartisan legislation and unfortunately it has been underfunded for years. I’ll push to expand it so communities can establish programs like this one.

• Invest in registered apprenticeships. Apprenticeships let people earn while they learn, and they are the backbone of how the trades and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard train their workforce. Federal apprenticeship funding should grow, not shrink in the years ahead. A strong pipeline into the Shipyard's apprenticeship program means a stronger yard for the future.

• Support and expand new rules opening Pell Grants to short-term job training. A motivated adult who wants a high-quality welding or medical-assistant certificate shouldn’t be locked out of federal aid just because the program isn’t a traditional degree.

• Support workforce partnerships that bring employers, schools, and the trades to the same table.

I’m running for Congress because I believe a person’s zip code and family income shouldn’t decide what their future looks like. That means a young person who wants to build something and learn a trade deserves a real, affordable path to make that happen close to home.

The ROMEOs understand that. Many of them devoted their careers to New Hampshire’s students, and even now, they are dreaming up ways to continue looking out for them. It’s been over forty years since our state built 275 Portsmouth Avenue to train its workforce, let’s invest in that workforce once again.